Elin Bolin”Alla mysiga var de bumbibjörnarna”

Estetisk-filosofiska fakulteten

Elin Bolin

”Alla mysiga var de bumbibjörnarna”

Some Early Swedish Learners’ Reading Strategies in English

Engelska C-uppsats

Termin: Vårterminen 2009 Handledare: Elisabeth Wennö

Abstract

Titel: ”Alla mysiga var de bumbibjörnarna”. Some Early Swedish Learners’ Reading Strategies in English.

Författare: Elin Bolin Engelska C, 2009

Antal sidor: 28

Abstract: Being a skilled reader makes it easier to learn a new language. It is important to teach students how the knowledge and use of reading strategies can facilitate learning. This study was made in a Swedish fourth grade class with eighteen participant pupils. They were asked to translate two texts from English into Swedish: one was a poem with nonsense words, and the other a prose text. The texts were taken from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll and The Garbage King by Elizabeth Laird. After this an interview was made with all of the pupils in pairs, where they were asked about their reading strategies normally and in this situation. The results found were that the reading strategies used were: likeness with their native language, previous vocabulary knowledge of the L2, syntactic knowledge, and guessing the meaning through the context.

The result confirms previous research in that the pupils who liked reading and did so in their spare time, did better when it came to making syntactically correct translations.

Nyckelord: Reading strategies, learning strategies, young L2 learners, vocabulary, Jabberwocky, the Garbage King.

Table of contents

1. Introduction

1:1 Aim 1

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Reading as a teaching method 2

2.2 Reading strategies 2 2.2.1 Cognitive, meta-cognitive and socio-affective strategies 2.2.2 Linguistic and non-linguistic pre-knowledge 2.3 “Good and “poor” readers 5

3. Method and material

4. Analysis and results

4.3.1 Knowledge of the target language 4.3.2 Likeness with native language 4.3.3 Syntactic knowledge 4.4 Results from the interviews 13

4.4.1 General strategies 4.4.2 “Jabberwocky” strategies 4.4.3 The Garbage King strategies 4.5 Individual results 16

5. Discussion

6. Conclusion

References

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

1. Introduction

We live in a textual world which requires decoding and interpretation. Written language is everywhere, and children encounter it in school as well as outside school. Therefore it is important to be able to read. Nevertheless, alarming studies show that reading abilities are decreasing amongst youngsters in Sweden (Fröjd 2005). The reasons for this development are too complex to go into here. But, as a consequence, it is increasingly important to teach children reading, both in their native language and in foreign languages. In the Swedish school the first foreign language children encounter is English. Accordingly, it is important for pupils in Swedish schools to be able to read, and to understand what they read in English.

Learning a language is in many ways like breaking a code.

To maximise students’ ability to achieve access to this code is an educational challenge for teachers and requires effective methods. This study will focus on reading and on how reading helps students develop vocabulary and understand the meaning of texts in English through gradual code-breaking. In particular, it aims to map out what strategies of decoding Swedish fourth-grade pupils use to understand word function and word meaning when they encounter unknown texts.

1.1 Aim

The aim of this essay is to contribute to reading research by exploring the strategies that develop early in children’s second language acquisition. I have carried out an investigation amongst a group of young learners of English, who are 10-11 years old. I have investigated their strategies for decoding when reading a nonsense text and a meaningful text. The texts I have used are the poem called “Jabberwocky” from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1972, first published in 1871) and the first paragraph from a book for young people called The Garbage King by Elizabeth Laird (2003). In this paper I am exploring what reading strategies these young learners of English are able to use, and if their possible success has to do with extensive reading outside of school.

More specifically, my research questions are:

• What reading strategies do young learners of English use?

• Is there a correlation with their reading in their first language(s)?

• Is there a correlation between early developed reading strategies and reading habits?

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Reading as a teaching method

Lightbown & Spada (2006) comment on reading as a teaching method by saying that reading improves the students’ vocabulary more than speaking, since students encounter more unknown words when reading, compared to speaking. A study made by Marlise Horst in 2005 shows that “substantial vocabulary growth through reading is possible, but that students must read a great deal (more than just one or two books per semester) to realize those benefits”

(Lightbown & Spada 2006:146). This shows that reading is very important when learning a foreign language.

Christopher Green (2005) describes a reading scheme that is used in Hong Kong, called “the Hong Kong Extensive Reading Scheme”. The idea is that students read quite a great amount of books during their English classes and encounter books of different levels in terms of increasing difficulty. The students can move up, or down, these levels through reading the books and making tests of their capacity as they go along. But there is a discrepancy between ideal and reality in Hong Kong, according to Green: “Perhaps nowhere in the world do the glowing aims of the scheme stand in starker contrast to the grim mechanics of its implementation than in Hong Kong” (Green 2005:307). The scheme has failed, according to Green, because the teachers function merely as guards, without participating in the students’

reading, and the schools have scheduled too little time for the reading, which makes the ambitious reading scheme work poorly. Green’s suggestion on how to make the scheme work as planned is to include the reading scheme into the task-based curriculum, and to have locally adapted reading schemes where students can,not only read, but also discuss what they have read, and discuss both content and lexical issues. In order to achieve results, reading has to become an interactive activity (Green 2005:310-311).

What happens in our brain when we read, and what happens in our brain when we understand what we read, as opposed to when we do not understand it are questions as difficult to answer as the question “what happens in our brain when we think?” Reading is almost like translating: translation of letters into words, words into sentences and the sentences into

meaning. In addition, reading is an activity which is very difficult to measure. One cannot see the process of reading, and there is no product to observe (Brown 2004:186). Therefore we try to assess reading in various ways. When assessing reading we have to think of ways to enter the brain to the extent possible, or in other words ask the right questions in order to find out how much the reader has comprehended from the text. Assessing reading has to do with how to find out how much the pupils comprehend from our teaching. And it is a way to discover if they understand what they have read or not.

2.2 Reading strategies

When encountering new and difficult vocabulary and in order to break the reading code, the learner has to use some sort of reading strategy. One difference between fluent and non-fluent readers is that the fluent readers are able to use a strategy. Unfortunately, in many cases pupils who read fluently in Swedish do not use the same strategies when reading in a second language (Malmberg et al. 2000:152). To improve their reading skill, the students therefore should practise their ability to skim a text the way they do when reading in Swedish. Projekt STRIMS: Strategier vid Inlärning av Moderna Språk (Project STRIMS: Strategies in learning modern languages) (Malmberg et al. 2000), has used a so-called “think-aloud” method to find out what strategies Swedish pupils use when they encounter a text that they do not fully understand. This required the teachers to be present when the students tried to read texts with new and difficult vocabulary in them. The students in the STRIMS-project used so called think-aloud protocols: They were “thinking loud” – telling their teachers how they reasoned while solving a problem – and that way the teachers were able to follow the students’ thought processes while they were reading.

To describe what happens when we read, two models are common in the field of study of reading: the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach. The bottom-up approach refers to the way we decode letters into words, and words into phrases, whereas the top-down approach refers to the ability to comprehend the meaning in a wider perspective. These two levels of reading are necessary for any reader to master in order to make meaning of a text (Brown 2004:185, Tornberg 1997:77). The conclusions we make when we read a text are in this field of study often called inferences. An inference is made when we use our previous experience to understand (or misunderstand) and interpret the information given to us (Tornberg 1997:78).

To be able to understand reading strategies, we have to look into what the term “strategy”

actually stands for in pedagogical research. In Språkdidaktik Ulrika Tornberg gives an overview of how the term has been used in research. She says that it could stand for an over- all tendency which the reader uses to work with language tasks, or for techniques and deliberate actions to facilitate learning both in the bottom-up and the top-down perspectives.

A learning strategy could also refer to the strategies which contribute to improving the language system of the learner. There are strategies which apparently show in the behaviour of the learner, and others that do not show and have to be studied through introspection (Tornberg 1997:20).

2.2.1 Cognitive, meta-cognitive and socio-affective strategies

Cognitive strategies are the strategies that we use when solving problems analytically.

Examples of cognitive strategies are: Repetition, translation, grouping, note-taking, deduction and formulating and testing problems. Meta-cognitive strategies are, on the other hand, strategies that the learner uses when consciously trying to learn, as well as to structure the work he or she has to do, in a more self-reflecting way. Examples of meta-cognitive strategies are: to concentrate on the task given, to know what way is best to solve a problem and to do it that way, self-corrections, listening to learn instead of speaking one’s mind, judging one’s own work regarding a certain task. Socio-affective strategies could be the following: to work together, to ask for help, and to give peer response (Tornberg 1997:21).

2.2.2 Linguistic and non-lingustic pre-knowledge

Tornberg (1997) also mentions two different surveys from the eighties (Hosenfeld 1984 and Block 1986) which both show that non-proficient pupils maintain their bottom-up strategy regarding reading in a second language; they decode it word by word, and their only strategy apart from that is the likeness between words in the first and the second language. The more proficient readers, on the other hand, are able to use the following strategies (according to Hosenfeld’s investigation):

- Using their knowledge about their world

- Guessing the meaning of the word from the context

- Reading globally without getting stuck on particular words - Using images

- Using syntactic knowledge

- Evaluating their guesses to see if they are reasonable

(referred to in Tornberg 1997:80)

This shows that it is helpful to use strategies, and important to explain to pupils how to use different strategies, and to use the knowledge they already have. Prior knowledge has a lot to do with the ability to form a strategy. There is linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge that is important for the second language learner, according to Tornberg. Examples of linguistic knowledge are:

- Knowledge of the target language

- Knowledge of other languages, for instance the mother tongue - Knowledge of word formation

- Syntactic knowledge

Examples of non-linguistic knowledge useful to the second language learner are:

- Knowledge about the subject - Knowledge about text types - Understanding of the context

- Knowledge about logical connections - Ability to interpret figures and pictures (Tornberg 1997:78)

2.3 “Good” and “poor” readers

In a survey similar to mine, titled The age factor and L2 reading strategies, Renata Ŝamo examined both whether good readers among pupils aged 13-14 were using reading strategies more frequently than poor readers, and whether the number of years learning the L2 (which in this case was English) affected their use of these reading strategies. The results were that the number of years learning the L2 was not influencing the proficiency of the readers: those who had learned English for a longer period were not more fluent readers than those who had learned it for a shorter period. This was explained by external factors both within and outside the school: many different teachers, family trouble etc. Nevertheless, good readers were using more strategies, and more often used strategies which had to do with self-supervision. The conclusion was that:

...we found out that the learners identified as good L2 readers used a wider range of L2 reading strategies and they did so more frequently than poor L2 readers.

These findings support the claim that good readers are more verbal, make better use of their limited working memory and verbalise more effeciently the things

they do in a think-aloud task. Also, they identify and remember important information, monitor their reading and evalute their reading. (Ŝamo 2009:130) As we can see, reading strategies are used more often by fluent, “good” readers. However, this does not show which came first, the strategy or the fluency. I will look more into this in my discussion.

3. Method and material

3.1 Presenting the method and the material

The methods I have used in my study is a translation task and an interview. The pupils participating were all but one from the same class in fourth grade, ten or eleven years old.

The interviews were performed in pairs, partly due to lack of time, partly so that the pupils would feel more comfortable and speak more freely. Prior to the day for the task and the interviews, permission had been given by their parents to participate in this study. All students but one in the class wanted to participate, but on the other hand one pupil who was not a regular member of the class took part – with parental permission – so the final number was still eighteen. The pupils were given two different texts to translate, one with partial use of nonsense English – the first verse of the poem “Jabberwocky” from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (first published in 1871) (see Appendix 1), and the other text was the first paragraph from a fiction youth novel called The Garbage King by Elizabeth Laird (2003) (Appendix 2). The nonsense text was chosen for the opportunity provided for the students to use their imagination in addition to recognizing word and sentence patterns. Consequently, it should be possible to track the guesses from the children – what is their association to a specific word? The other text was chosen because it was considered to be above the level of fourth-graders, but not completely impossible to decipher.

The pupils were given the instruction to translate the texts line by line. They had no prior knowledge of the texts. When given the texts, they were told that the first one was a poem and the second a prose text. However, many of the pupils perceived the latter as a non-coherent text, consisting of different poems, which probably blurred their understanding of the context.

On the other hand, one third (12 out of 18) have seemingly interpreted the text as one unit which might show that they are good readers and are able to create coherence from a text which is not obviously coherent.

As mentioned before, eighteen pupils did the task. They were in a normal classroom situation when doing the translation, and the interviews were performed afterwards in a room next to the classroom. Before starting the translation, they were instructed to guess as far as possible and if there was absolutely no chance of guessing, they were told to skip that word and go on to the next one. When they were doing the task, I tried to restrain some of them from helping each other. Some of them might have talked to each other about the translation anyhow, but most of them worked concentratedly on their own. When they asked questions I tried to answer as clearly as possible without giving away the “right” answer. Their teacher was present when they translated, but not in the interview room. After most of the class had finished translating, the interviews started. As mentioned before, the interviews were done in pairs. One disadvantage with this method is the fact that they might influence each other with their answers. When one of the pupils was more dominating than the other, I simply asked the less dominating pupil specifically for her/his point of view, and that method worked well. The reason I interviewed all of the pupils was because I did not know beforehand which pupils would be able to translate both texts. This way, I covered both skilled and less skilled readers, and was able to ask all of them how they perceived the task. The pairs were teamed up by the closeness to each other on the class list, in alphabetical order. The interviews took about five to ten minutes to perform. The interview questions – which were performed in Swedish – are included as Appendix 3.

3.2 Children’s cognitive development

In order to understand where these children are in their cognitive development – generally speaking – here is a short description of what cognitive theory says about how the mind works at this age. According to Piaget’s theory of children’s cognitive development, the stage between seven and eleven, which is the age the pupils in my survey are at, is called the concrete operational period. Children are developing their logical abilities during this period, and are, for instance, able to take into account several aspects of a problem in order to solve it.

They are also able to coordinate ideas into a system – they are able to do an operation. But the operation has to be concrete since abstractions are still too difficult to understand at this age (Evenshaug & Hallén 2001:127-129).

4. Analysis and results

The two texts the pupils read were quite different in form as the first was a poem and the second a fictional prose text. They also differed in the respect that the poem consisted mostly of nonsense words. Therefore I will first analyse them separately and give an overview later.

Before each analysis I will present the actual text (for the worksheet the pupils used, see Appendices 1 and 2).To be able to analyse the texts, I divided them into lexical items, which in many cases correspond to words and sometimes to short phrases.

4.1 The nonsense poem

This is the poem the children were asked to translate into Swedish:

Jabberwocky

Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 1971:134)

Table 1 shows the most common translations of the words in “Jabberwocky”. One pupil offered translations of every item, whereas one pupil only translated the word and. Four pupils translated only and, in and the nouns into ‘den’, while the remaining produced 5 to 13 translations out of a possible 14. Apart from and, in and the, the most commonly translated item was were. The least commonly translated items were brillig, slithy, the borogoves and outgrabe (see also Appendix 4).

Table 1. The pupils’ most common translations of “Jabberwocky”. The numerals before the words represent the numbers of pupils giving the answer. Where no numeral is indicated the answer is unique.

Lexical items Pupils' answers

Twas 3 Det var 2 Var Trasslig De var

Brillig Fantastisk Gryning Billig Bra

And 18 Och

The toves 2 Tovor Tofflorna Skjortor Tuvorna

Slithy 2 Slitna Slitiga Fräsiga

Did gyre and gimble

9 Och 2 Gjorde Jag hyrde och stickade

Gryde och grode

In 9 I 2 in

The wabe 5 Den 3 Nät Det Den vebben

All mimsy 9 Alla Alla

vimsiga

Allt mumsit Helt vimsit

Were 11 Var

The borogoves 5 Den 2 Det De bumbibjörnarna Det där

ohyran/skalbaggarna

And 17 Och

The mome raths 5 Den 3 Råttor 2 Det Mamman ryter

Outgrabe Utom

räckhåll

Härjade Utgraberade Uthål

First a few comments on the words that are not obviously nonsense words. As we can see, twas has been interpreted as the beginning of a story – that is, an elliptical ‘it was’ by only four pupils (or three, depending on how we understand ‘de var’ ) – the rest have skipped it, or written something else, like ‘trasslig’, which shares some sounds with the original word, but is not syntactically logical. The function word and has not caused any problems. In has been correctly translated by many of the pupils as well; the pupils seem to have a good sense of how to use function words like these, as well as the auxiliary were. The many translations of nouns to only ‘det’ or ‘den’ is probably partly a wish to signal that they know the function of the definite article, partly an inability to see the difference between determiner and pronoun.

4.2 Linguistic reading strategies

We will now look into how these young learners use reading strategies when translating the words. The categories are freely adapted from Tornberg’s Språkdidaktik. I am using the categories likeness with native language, knowledge of the target language, and syntactic knowledge.

4.2.1 Likeness with native language

The strategy of trying to find a likeness with the native language is very common, and is used for the word brillig, which has been translated into ‘billig’ which sounds like brillig. The toves was translated into ‘tovor’, ‘tofflorna’, and ‘tuvor’. Mimsy sounds similar to ‘vimsiga’, or ‘mumsit’. Most pupils translated all into ‘alla’: ‘alla mysiga var de bumbibjörnarna’ (pupil no. 3), which indicates that they have not understood all when used as an adverb yet. The translation of borogoves into ‘borrmaskiner’ (see Appendix 2) is probably a guess based upon its likeness with the Swedish word.

4.2.2 Knowledge of the target language

All the pupils have succeeded in the translation of the word and and many in the translation of in, the and to some extent the meaning of the word all. Furthermore, many of them know for example that if a word ends with a –y it is likely to be an adjective of some sort (as in slithy and mimsy). The translation of raths into ‘råttor’ (rats) shows that many of the pupils go for similarity. They see that a word looks almost like another word they already know (in some cases perhaps they do not know the exact spelling and therefore think it is the same word), and therefore go for the easiest explanation – that similarity means synonymity. This goes

also for the wabe, which is translated into ‘nät’ or ‘vebb’. Another association is seen with the translation of brillig into ‘fantastisk’, which goes via ‘brilliant’ (the pupil told me). It is to be noted that the two pupils who made the most correct guesses – and therefore are probably skilled language learners and readers – have not presumed that similarity equals synonymity.

This indicates that on a certain level of learning, this is a strategy, but once they have advanced beyond this level, the similarity=synonymity formula seems unreliable and is therefore not used as a strategy.

4.2.3 Syntactic knowledge

Morphological pre-knowledge can guide the pupil in the direction of what grammatical function a word has in the sentence. The typical derivational adjective ending-y in mimsy and slithy suggests that these words are adjectives, and are accordingly translated into: ‘vimsiga’,

‘vimsit’, ‘mumsit’, ‘mysiga’, ‘förvirrade’ (see Appendix 4). Slithy becomes ‘fräsiga’, ‘slitiga’, or ‘slitna’. Nouns seem to be easy to detect as well, since most have perceived those correctly – they seem to have an internal rule which tells them that if they see a definite article, the word next to it is probably a noun. The mome raths is possible to translate either as a noun in the plural, or a noun in the singular followed by a verb in the present tense, which one pupil did. He translated the sentence The mome raths outgrabe into ‘Mamman ryter utom räckhåll’

which is all fine according to the syntactic pattern. The only indication that this is not correct is that the rest of the poem is written in the past tense. There are only four verbs in the poem, but they seem difficult to translate. Verbs are carriers of context to a very large extent, and perhaps therefore difficult to decipher. Most of the pupils who tried, translated were and did correctly. The verb outgrabe caused confusion, but a few of the children have seen the morpheme out- and translated it accordingly and tried to make sense of the morpheme -grabe (‘utom räckhåll’, ‘utgraberade’, ‘uthål’).

4.3 The prose text

The prose text presented runs as follows:

There was no light in the shack, none at all, except when the moon was shining. Mamo could see chinks of it then, through the gaps in the corrugated-iron roof. But the moon wasn’t out tonight. Mamo shivered, pulled the ragged blanket over his head and huddled against Tiggist’s¹warm body. (Laird 2003:1)

1In the book it says “his sister’s” but I changed that to see how the pupils would understand the name.

Table 2 shows the most common translations of The Garbage King. Two pupils offered translations of every item, whereas one pupil translated only three words (no, the and out).

Apart from and and the, the most commonly translated items were there was, no light, when the moon, but the moon, and over his head. The least commonly translated items were chinks of it, then, the gaps, shivered, ragged, huddled against, Tiggist’s. (See also Appendix 4).

Table 2. The pupils’ most common translations of the excerpt from The Garbage King. The numerals before the words represent the numbers of pupils giving the answer. Where no numeral is indicated the answer is unique.

Lexical items Pupils' answers

There was 11 Det var 2 Där var Det fanns Den var

No light 13 Inget ljus 2 Nej Ljus Inte ett ljus

In the shack 5 I 2 I Shacket Den I shack

None at all 8 Inget alls Ingen efter allt Ingen av all Det är all

Except 7 Förutom Acceptera Accepterade Utan

When the moon 9 När månen Den måne Månen Den

Was shining 7 Lyste 3 Var Var skinande Skinande

Mamo 4 Mamo Mamos

Could see 5 Kunde se 2 Se Skulle se Kläder

Chinks of it Av den Något av dem Kycklingvingar som

flög

Blinkar av det

Then 3 Då

Through 4 Genom Det var Tungt Igenom

The gaps Hål De Andas Gapet Öppningen

In 7 I Av In

The corrugated-iron roof

Stentaket Metall tak Påbörjand järn taket Corrautedge järn voff

But the moon 10 Men månen 3 Men den månen

Men Fast den månen

Wasn't out tonight 8 Var inte ute inatt 2 Var ute Var tuff ikväll eller hur Var inte ute

Mamo 5 Mamo

Shivered Delade Sherverade Suckade Vikte ut

Pulled 2 Drog Puttade Pillade Knuffade

The blanket 2 Det 2 Filten 2 Den Blanketen

Ragged 2 Den

trasiga/slitna

Och raggade En raggarbil Over his head 12 Över hans

huvud

Över huvet Över huvud sen Över honnon huvud

And 11 Och Fanns

Huddled against 2 Mot Bakhuvud mot Huddled mot Tryckte sig tätt intill

Tiggist's 3 Tiggists Dens Tiggest Tiggist

Warm body 9 Varma kropp 4 Varm kropp

4.3.1 Knowledge of the target language

In the excerpt from The Garbage King, there are no nonsense words, and more words and phrases that the pupils are able to recognize than in the poem. There are expressions like There was, which is a common beginning of a story, and 15 of the pupils actually knew this

phrase (this also has to do with context, see below). No light, when the moon, but the moon, wasn’t out tonight, over his head or warm body, are phrases often correctly translated as they contain words that are part of children’s familiar experience such as night and day (light, moon) and words of body parts (head, body).

4.3.2 Likeness with native language

The shack has by many been translated as ‘hacket’, ‘schack’, ‘shaktet’ etc., guesses based on how the word sounds in English, which is the bottom-up approach, and known as a common strategy among not so skilled readers (Tornberg 1997:74). Except sounds very similar to

‘acceptera’, which two pupils offered as a translation. Chinks of it has rendered creative guesses, such as ‘kycklingvingar som flög’, ‘blinkar av det’ and ‘bebisar av det’ (see Appendix 4). In the case of ‘bebisar’, the pupil explained to me how he had been thinking:

chinks sounds a little like ‘chicks’, which in English is a nice looking girl, or ‘baby’, which in Swedish is ‘bebis’. The translations of gaps into ‘gapet’ (which is not so far from the truth) or

‘gäsp’, ragged into ‘raggarbil’ or ‘raggade’ are other examples. The adjective warm is almost the same in Swedish, and has been correctly translated by 15 pupils.

4.3.3 Syntactic knowledge

The pupils have been able to detect nouns and verbs in this text as well. Most pupils who have done translations have written it in the past tense. There are only three adjectives in the text, corrugated, ragged and warm. None of the adjectives have typical endings as in the nonsense text wich has words with –y at the end, and the words in this text are therefore somewhat more difficult. Warm is a word the pupils know, as mentioned before, but corrugated and ragged are more difficult.

4.4 Results from the interviews

The interview part also revealed reading strategies. I asked the pupils what they did when encountering difficult words. Their answers were very similar. The questions were asked and answered in Swedish (see Appendix 3).²

When asked if they liked to read, and if they read a lot of books, most of the pupils answered

“yes”. The answer “yes” is probably given because this is what they believe to be the

2I have only included three of the interview questions with answers, otherwise the material would have been too extensive.

expected answer in the school context that they are in, which in most of the cases is true, and should not be held against them. Moreover, the question is subjectively answered (which is true of all answers in the interview situation) and only reflects the respondent’s subjective experience. I did not go into how many books they have read; but it seems that most of the pupils have the feeling that they read a lot of books – mainly in Swedish. When asked if they liked to read English texts, more answered “so and so”. Seven of the eighteen answered that they did not like to read English texts. Those who did not like it seemed to think that it was the risk of not understanding, which made in boring. “So and so, I might not understand what it is” (pupil no.4). Pupil no. 17 responded frankly: “No, because I’m no good at English”.

4.4.1 General strategies

When asked about strategies for understanding difficult words, most of the pupils answered

“guessing”, “asking my teacher” or “looking it up in a dictionary” (see also Table 3). Answers such as “try to figure it out” (Table 3, pupil no. 1) and “sit and figure it out” (pupil no.13) might show an effort to find associations, while “... it is possible to guess through the context”

(pupil no. 7), “I understand from the other words” (pupil no.8), or “continue reading, to get meaning from context” (pupil no. 10) suggest attempts to get meaning from context. Pupil no.

9 answered “put a word there to see if it fits”, which could indicate either syntactic knowledge, or a context-finding strategy. “Ask for help” (pupil no. 3 and others), is a socio- affective strategy. The pupil who answered: “I don’t guess. If you guess wrong, it will be wrong” (pupil no.15), has perhaps some kind of negative experience of guessing before. His reluctance to guess could also be a wish to always be “right” which might not be advantageous in a learning situation.

Table 3. Students responses to the question “what do you do when you come across words you don’t understand?”³

Pupil no.

1 I look it up in a dictionary. Try to figure it out.

2 Skip it. Continue reading. I consider what might be suitable.

3 I ask for help, skip it, or look it up in a dictionary.

4 I skip it or ask for help.

5 I guess.

6 I ask for help. Sometimes I guess.

7 Look it up in a dictionary. If one is reading, it is possible to guess through the context.

8 I don't bother, I understand from the other words.

9 I ask my teacher, use a dictionary. Put a word there to see if it fits.

10 Think again, guess, sometimes you can work it out. Continue reading, to get meaning from context.

11 Ask the teacher or dictionary. Skip it.

12 I call for my teacher. I read in English and translate into Swedish.

13 Dictionary, or sit and think a little while on my own.In this test I guessed.

14 Dictionary.

15 Dictionary. I don't guess. If you guess wrong, it will be wrong 16 I ask the teacher.

17 I ask the teacher, or skip it.

18 I ask the teacher.

3My translations.

4.4.2 “Jabberwocky” strategies

I will refrain from presenting the answers to question no. 4 “What makes it fun or boring to read?”, since it proved to be irrelevant for this particular survey (although it is without a doubt an interesting question). When I asked the pupils what they thought about the poem, it seems that they were all a bit confused but did not question if these words really were English words. Many answered that they “didn’t understand anything at all” (pupil no. 1), and that it did not feel like a poem because it was strange and difficult to see the context. A common strategy mentioned is that of guessing, which they had been explicitly encouraged to do.

Table 4. Pupils’ answers to the question “how did you figure out what the words meant (in Jabberwocky)?”⁴

Pupil no.

1 I read it a few times. Tried to understand.

2 I guessed a little.

3 I guessed. Thought "Brillig" meant "brilliant". "Toves" meant "tofflor". "slithy" I made up the meaning for.

4 Wrote the words I knew.

5 I think. Figured it out when I understood what it meant.

6 Knew the words I wrote, like two.

7 Tried to guess, to hear what it sounded like.

8 Just guessed.

9 I've heard them before.

10 I guessed.

11 I knew "and" and "the". The rest I guessed. I recognized "twas" a little.

12 I knew some of them.

13 Took the words I already knew. Guessed.

14 Same as pupil no. 13.

15 Knew them.

16 Heard them before.

17 Thought deep inside my head.

18 Some I knew already.

“Thought deep inside my head” (pupil no. 17) might indicate an effort to find associations to words already known, or a meaningful word for the context. “Figured it out when I understood what it meant” (pupil no. 5) shows the strategy to gain meaning from context, and

“to hear what it sounded like” (pupil no. 7) might also show an effort to find associations. Not all pupils translated more than the function words or ‘det’ or ‘den’ in “Jabberwocky”, but about half of them did try to translate the lexical words as well.

4My translations.

4.4.3 The Garbage King strategies

Most of the children seem to have found the prose text easier to understand than the poem except for two of them, one who thought they were equally difficult and one who thought the poem was easier. Regarding the prose text, one commonly used strategy was to read it through and then write the translation down. “I read the whole text first. If you see the overall picture, it’s easier to see” (pupil no. 7). Two pupils answered that they had been thinking about the word Mamo, and decided it was a name (pupils no. 3 and no. 7).

Table 5. Pupils’ answers to the question “how did you figure out what the words meant? (The Garbage King) ” ⁵

Pupil no.

1 I read it a few times, before I went to the next.

2 Not really, many words lacking.

3 Understood it a little. "Mamo" was a name.

4 -

5 -

6 Guessed.

7 I read the whole text first. If you see the overall picture, it's easier to see. I wondered if Mamo was a name, and then I thought it was.

8 Only guessed on a couple of words.

9 Heard the words before.

10 Guessed.

11 Knew and guessed.

12 I knew the words I wrote.

13 I know some through TV.

14 I've heard quite a lot.

15 You can guess sometimes if you know a lot of words.

16 Just took a chance, knew some words, could guess what they meant.

17 Thought and figured it out. Guessed one.

18 Some words I knew. Guessed some.

4.5 Individual results

Table 6 below shows the individual results regarding “Jabberwocky”. Each pupil got one point per syntactically adequate translation into Swedish, and the results are shown in this table. (See also Appendix 4). Table 7 shows the same thing for The Garbage King, and Table 8 shows the total results.

5My translations.

Table 6. Points given to the pupils whenever they translated the lexical items in “Jabberwocky” into syntactically adequate lexical items in Swedish. For the complete table, see appendix 2.

Pupil no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Sum 9 9 13 3 12 2 15 6 5 3 10 3 9 3 5 7 3 7

% 60 60 87 20 80 13 100 40 33 20 67 20 60 20 33 47 20 47

The pupils who managed well in the translation of “Jabberwocky” (that is, those who made syntactically adequate guesses in more than half of the cases) were pupils no. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and 13.

Table 7. Points given to the pupils whenever they translated the lexical items in The Garbage King into syntactically adequate lexical items in Swedish. For the complete table, see appendix 2.

Pupil no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Sum 14 20 24 6 23 3 31 9 9 16 31 0 6 10 17 14 4 14

% 45 65 77 19 74 10 100 29 29 52 100 0 19 32 55 45 13 45

Those who managed well (more than 50 %) in the translation of The Garbage King, were pupils no. 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, and 15.

Table 8. Points given to the pupils whenever they translated the lexical items in “Jabberwocky” or The garbage king into syntactically adequate lexical items in Swedish.

Pupil no. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Total sum 23 29 37 9 35 5 46 15 14 19 41 3 15 13 22 21 7 21 Total sum

% 50 63 80 29 76 11 100 33 45 41 89 6 33 28 47 46 15 46

As we can see from table 6, one third of the children – six out of eighteen – managed to translate half or more of the lexical items into the right words or word classes, i.e. pupils no.

1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. These pupils were all very interested in reading and writing in English and in Swedish. The pupils who did not translate the words into the right words or word classes (or did not attempt to translate them at all), were pupils 4, 6, 12, 14 and 17. These accomplished less than thirty percent, and while some of them did not read a lot, some of them liked reading. Hence, there is little correlation between results in table 6 and reading strategies mentioned in the interviews, partly due to the fact that those who did translate

“Jabberwocky” got a much higher score than those who did not.

Let us look at pupils no. 3, no. 7 and no. 11. They were the ones with the far best results in translating, both regarding translation frequency and how correct their translations were.

Their strategies, however, were quite different. Pupil no. 3 mentioned “I ask for help, skip it,

or look it up in a dictionary” (Table 3), pupil no. 7 had explicit strategies which amounted to keeping reading and understanding through the context, e.g. “if you see the overall picture, it’s easier to see” (Table 5), but pupil no. 11 was briefer, and answered “knew and guessed”

(Table 5) or “ask the teacher or dictionary, skip it” (Table 3). However, although pupil no. 11 might have been briefer and unable to describe what he was doing when understanding English so well, his reading habits were extensive. “I read a lot, even in English: The Werewolf, Phantom of the opera.” Pupil no. 7 said: “I love to read”. Both pupils 7 and 11 were keen on writing their own stories: “Can be fun. Funnier to write.” (pupil no. 11). “I understand a lot. I write my own sometimes”. Even though pupil no. 3 claimed that he did not like reading, he was a good and intelligent guesser. He dared to guess, and drew adequate conclusions when translating: “I guessed. Thought brillig meant ‘brilliant’. Toves meant

‘tofflor’. Slithy I made up the meaning for” (Table 3).

5. Discussion

Which comes first, reading skills or extensive reading? My study does not answer this question. In all likelihood the two aspects probably develop simultaneously in reciprocal stimulation and interaction. Is it possible to force someone to read even if they do not like it? I do not think so. But I think that what teachers have to do is to take care of the reading interest that already exists, and tell the pupils how to develop their language learning through the use of reading strategies. Not so skilled and modestly interested pupils can benefit from learning about learning and reading strategies as well as more gifted pupils, although they do not need to be taught strategies since they already use them. I think that they need to be made aware of the advantages of using guessing as a reading strategy. In fact, reading has in some cases been described as a “psycholinguistic guessing game”. It is like a correlation between the text, the reader and the reader’s previous experience (Hedge 2000:188). Knowing this would perhaps help many students to break the reading code. I mentioned earlier that these children are in the psychological developmental stage which Piaget calls “the concrete operational period”

(Evenshaug & Hallén 2001:127-129). According to this theory, they have difficulties with abstract thinking, and probably this is – at least partly – a reason why they cannot really explain how they were thinking when performing a task. On the other hand, some of them, like pupils no.5 and no.7 did not have any problems in explaining their thoughts.

6. Conclusion

For my investigation I tested eighteen fourth-graders in a Swedish municipal school to see how they translated two previously unknown texts from English into Swedish. I also did a short interview with all of the eighteen pupils to hear what they said about reading strategies in general and on this specific occasion. In conclusion, the research done in this paper shows that the reading strategies many of these young learners of English use are:

 The strategy of likeness with their native language (mostly concerning vocabulary),

 Their previous vocabulary knowledge of the L2,

 Their syntactic knowledge – both of the L2 and the native language. They are actually very good at seeing the syntactic patterns even if they have not learned or even heard about the grammar rules.

 The fourth strategy, which emerged through the interviews, is guessing the meaning through the context.

It is difficult to draw any conclusions from a small investigation like this, but it seems that there is a correlation between the reading habits and the reading strategies which children develop at an early age. Those pupils who achieved the best results in the translations liked reading and learning a new language, although not all of the pupils who like reading managed to translate these two texts accurately. However, it is not easy to detect if the reading habits have affected their use of reading strategies. What I noted were in short two things. Firstly, early learners of English (aged 10-11) primarily use the strategy of likeness with their own language when translating English. Secondly, when the learners develop a bit further, this strategy is no longer used. Many of the pupils mentioned during the interviews that they often try to get meaning from the context when encountering difficult words, which indicates that they are skilled.

For future research it would be interesting to examine and compare the reading strategies applied to deciphering a nonsense text and a meaningful text by pupils of different ages, or to investigate in depth pupils’ reading habits in both L1 and L2 through interviews with teachers and students, or follow a number of students for a longer period monitoring their reading habits and the development of reading strategies.

References

Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices. New York: Longman.

Carroll, Lewis. 1971. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking glass and what Alice found there. London: Oxford University Press.

Evenshaug, Oddbjörn & Dag Hallén. 2001. Barn- och ungdomspsykologi. Lund:

Studentlitteratur.

Fröjd, Per. 2005. Att läsa och förstå svenska. Läsförmågan hos elever i årskurs 9 i Borås 2000-2002. Göteborg: Institutionen för svenska språket, Göteborgs universitet.

Green, Cristopher. 2005. Integrating extensive reading in the task-based curriculum. ELT Journal, 59(4), (306-311)

Hedge, Tricia. 2000. Teaching and learning in the language classroom. London: Oxford University Press.

Laird, Elizabeth. 2003. The garbage king. London: Macmillan Children’s books.

Lightbown, Patsy & Nina Spada. 2006. How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Malmberg, Per (ed.), Inger Bergström, Ulla Håkansson, Ulrika Tornberg & Martin Öman.

2000. I huvudet på en elev: projektet STRIMS: strategier vid inlärning av moderna språk.

Stockholm: Bonnier utbildning, (152-176)

Ŝamo, Renata. 2009. The age factor and L2 reading strategies. In Nikolov, Marianne (ed.) Early learning of modern foreign languages: processes and outcomes. Bristol: Multilingual.

Tornberg, Ulrika. 1997. Språkdidaktik. Malmö: Gleerups.

Appendix 1

1. Läs dikten nedanför.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

________________________________________________________________

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

________________________________________________________________

All mimsy were the borogoves,

________________________________________________________________

And the mome raths outgrabe.

________________________________________________________________

2. Översätt dikten till svenska. Skriv på raden under. Om du inte vet vad orden betyder, gissa!

3. Försök att komma ihåg hur du kom fram till vad dikten betydde. Vi ska prata

om det om en stund.

Appendix 2

1. Läs texten nedanför.

There was no light in the shack, none at all, except when the moon

________________________________________________________________

was shining. Mamo could see chinks of it then,

________________________________________________________________

through the gaps in the corrugated-iron roof.

________________________________________________________________

But the moon wasn’t out tonight.

________________________________________________________________

Mamo shivered, pulled the ragged blanket

________________________________________________________

over his head and huddled against Tiggist’s warm body.

________________________________________________________

2. Översätt texten till svenska. Skriv på raden under. Om du inte vet vad orden betyder, gissa!

3. Försök att komma ihåg hur du kom fram till vad texten betydde. Vi ska prata om det om en stund.

Namn: ………

Appendix 3 Intervjufrågor

1. Gillar du att läsa och i så fall, brukar du läsa mycket, i skolan och/eller hemma.

2. Tycker du om att läsa texter på engelska?

3. Vad gör du om du stöter på ord som du inte förstår?

4. Vad gör det roligt/tråkigt att läsa?

Om texterna:

1. Vad tänkte du om dikten, när du läste den?

2. Hur kom du fram till vad orden betydde?

3. Vad tänkte du om den andra texten, när du läste den?

4. Hur kom du fram till vad den betydde?

5. Tyckte du att någon av texterna var svårare än den andra? Varför?

Namn:...

Appendix 4

”Jabberwocky”

Lexical items Pupils' answers

Twas 2 Det var 2 Var Trasslig De var

Brillig Fantastisk Gryning Billig Bra

And 18 Och

The toves 2 Tovor Tofflorna Skjortor Tuvorna Tofflan

Slithy 2 Slitna Slitiga Fräsiga

Did gyre and gimble 9 Och 2 Gjorde

Jag hyrde och

stickade Gryde och grode Det gryde och månen

In 9 I 2 in

The wabe 5 Den 3 Nät Det Den vebben Är på himmlen

All mimsy 9 Alla Alla vimsiga Allt mumsit Helt vimsit Allt

Were 11 Var

The borogoves 5 Den 2 Det De bumbibjörnarna

Det där

ohyran/skalbaggarna Borrmaskiner

And 17 Och

The mome raths 5 Den 3 Råttor 2 Det Mamman ryter Dom stora råttorna

Outgrabe Utom räckhåll Härjade Utgraberade Uthål

The garbage king

Lexical items Pupils' answers

There was 11 Det var 2 Där var Det fanns Den var Der var

No light 13 Inget ljus 2 Nej Ljus Inte ett ljus Inte

In the schack 5 I 2 I Shacket Den I shack I den

None at all 8 Inget alls Ingen efter allt Ingen av all Det är all Alla

Except 7 Förutom Acceptera Accepterade Utan Expriment

When the moon 9 När månen Den måne Månen Den Det

Was shining 7 Lyste 3 Var Var skinande Skinande Vad skiner

Mamo 4 Mamo Mamos

Could see 5 Kunde se 2 Se Skulle se Kläder

Chinks of it Av den Något av dem

Kycklingvingar som

flög Blinkar av det Är inte alls som vanligt

Then 3 Då

Trough 4 Genom Det var Tungt Igenom Mellan

The gaps Hål De Andas Gapet Öppningen Den

In 7 I Av In

The corrugated iron-roof Stentaket Metall tak

Påbörjand järn taket

Corrautedge järn

voff Det steniga taket

But the moon 10 Men månen 3 Men den månen Men Fast den månen Det är sent

Wasn't out tonight 8 Var inte ute inatt 2 Var ute

Var tuff ikväll eller

hur Var inte ute På ont natt

Mamo 5 Mamo

Shivered Delade Sherverade Suckade Vikte ut

Pulled 2 Drog Puttade Pillade Knuffade

The blanket 2 Det 2 Filten 2 Den Blanketen Blanket

Ragged 2 Den trasiga/slitna Och raggade En raggarbil

Over his head 12 Över hans huvud Över huvet Över huvud sen Över honnon huvud Över sitt huvud

And 11 Och Fanns

Huddled against 2 Mot Bakhuvud mot Huddled mot Tryckte sig tätt intill Armled

Tiggist's 3 Tiggists Dens Tiggest Tiggist

Warm body 9 Varma kropp 4 Varm kropp

Appendix 5

Karlstad 2009-04-27

Målsmans medgivande beträffande elevernas ifyllande av frågeformulär och deltagande i intervjuer.

Hej!

Jag heter Elin Bolin, och utbildar mig just nu till lärare på Karlstads universitet. För tillfället håller jag på med en kombinerad engelsk C-uppsats och examensarbete, och för att få stoff till min undersökning behöver jag utföra ett enkelt läsförståelseprov, och göra en kort intervju med eleverna i klassen. Detta kommer att ske under en engelsklektion, och barnens lärare Barbro kommer också att vara närvarande. Materialet kommer sedan att analyseras av mig, och eventuellt också ses av min handledare Elisabeth Wennö på Karlstads universitet. När jag så småningom presenterar resultaten i min uppsats, kommer givetvis inga namn att nämnas;

eleverna kommer att vara fullständigt anonyma. Efter avslutat arbete kommer min uppsats att arkiveras på Karlstads universitet, där den går att låna på biblioteket, om Ni är intresserade av att läsa om vad jag kommit fram till med hjälp av Era barn. Jag är oerhört tacksam för de elever som frivilligt ställer upp i denna undersökning, och hoppas att Ni som målsmän vill ge Ert medgivande i de fall era ungdomar ställer upp. Det är naturligtvis min förhoppning att de också ska tycka att det är roligt att delta i detta projekt!

Om Ni har frågor är Ni välkomna att höra av Er till mig på telefon: 070-xxx xx xx

Tack på förhand!

Elin Bolin, lärarstuderande.

Jag, som målsman för ________________________________, intygar härmed att mitt barn får deltaga i undersökningen i klassen.

__________________________________

(namn)